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This week is the showdown in the Supreme Court, and I'm already starting to feel like the newspapers and Web sites are reporting on all-Obamacare, all the time.

The court cases will proceed in 4 parts:

Monday (90 minutes): standing (in other words, is anyone even permitted to challenge Obamacare yet since the law mostly hasn't taken effect?). This issue has been grafted on to this case because it has been coming up in a number of cases over the past 20 years, and it's time for the Supreme Court to issue a definitive ruling one way or the other on such challenges. It's a gating issue here; if the court decides that there isn't standing, then the case goes away. However, it's being watched to see what general guidelines the court will create on this issue, which will extend way beyond Obamacare.

Tuesday (120 min.): constitutionality of purchase mandate. This is the heart of the Obamacare case. Once more, we examine the limits of the horrible (in my opinion) New Deal Supreme Court decision Wickard v. Filburn, albeit from a different perspective. To me, it seems highly likely that the Court will decide that there are limits on Commerce Clause power. Which leads to. . .

Wednesday (90 minutes): severance. Normally, the remaining provisions in laws passed by Congress that have a provision struck down by the courts take effect anyway. However, for Obamacare, Congress added a provision that, if the purchase mandate was struck down, the whole bill was void. This is an examination of that issue. Then, later in the day. . .

Wednesday (60 minutes): federal coercion. This bill threatens all kinds of draconian cutoffs of federal aid to states for states that do not comply with Obamacare. In another infamous Supreme Court decision, South Dakota v. Dole, the Supreme Court held 7-2 that Congress could cut off some federal highway aid to states that didn't adopt a minimum drinking age of 21. (The libertarian O'Connor and the liberal Brennan dissented.) Basically, since then, Congress has applied that rule as if there were no boundaries. This session is to determine whether there are any boundaries to it. Like Monday's session, the issue is not really focused on Obamacare, but it's relevant to Obamacare.

In short, of the four Supreme Court sessions, two are focused on issues that exist independently of Obamacare (standing and federal coercion), with Obamacare just being used as a peg for the re-examination of those issues. One (severance) is based on an exemption to an established rule that Congress included in Obamacare. And only one (purchase mandate) is really based on whether or not any part of Obamacare will ever become law, so that day (Tuesday) will be the real focal point.

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